Nimitz, Chester

Nimitz, Chester (1885–1966), World War II Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.Born in Fredericksburg, Texas, on 24 February 1885, Nimitz graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1905, and served in the Pacific successively in a battleship and as commanding officer of a gunboat and of a destroyer. In 1909, transferred to the Atlantic for submarine duty, he made himself an expert in submarine diesel engines. In 1913, sent by the navy to Germany to perfect his knowledge of such engines, he returned and supervised construction of diesels in a new oiler. In World War I, Nimitz served as engineering aide and chief of staff to the commander of the U.S. Atlantic submarine flotilla.

Nimitz, recognizing his main talent, now shifted the direction of his career from operating machinery to directing people, a new emphasis put severely to the test in 1920 when he oversaw the building of a submarine base at Pearl Harbor. In 1922–23, Commander Nimitz attended the Naval War College. Thereafter, in a series of promotions, he rose in rank and command. In 1933, as captain, he commanded a heavy cruiser. In 1938, as rear admiral, he assumed command of Battleship Division One. The following year he went ashore as a bureau chief with the function of assembling and training officers and enlisted men for naval expansion in the impending World War II.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, following the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, appointed Nimitz commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet and subsequently of the Pacific Ocean Areas, entrusting to his command all American and Allied sea, land, and air forces in the north, central, and south Pacific. From his Pearl Harbor headquarters, Nimitz directed growing American forces in the 1942 carrier battles of the Coral Sea and Midway and in the reconquest of Guadalcanal, victories that brought the southern and eastern advance of the Japanese to a halt and turned the tide of war.

In 1943, forces under Nimitz ousted the Japanese from the Aleutians and collaborated with Gen. Douglas MacArthur's southwest Pacific forces in reconquering the Solomons and eastern New Guinea. In 1944, the two commanders cooperated in a drive to the Philippines, MacArthur by amphibious advances along the New Guinea north coast, Nimitz by conquest of the Gilbert, Marshall, and Mariana islands and the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf, sea fights that virtually eliminated the Japanese fleet.

In 1945, Nimitz, wearing the five stars of his new rank of fleet admiral, directed the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa from his advanced headquarters on Guam and ordered the bombings and bombardments of Japan that preceded the Japanese capitulation. On the deck of the battleship Missouri he and General MacArthur signed the instrument of surrender on behalf of the United States.

Following the war, Nimitz served two years as chief of naval operations, then settled at Berkeley, California. He limited his public activities to making an occasional speech on behalf of the United Nations and serving as regent of the University of California. His health declining, the navy transferred him to more comfortable quarters on Yerba Buena Island in San Francisco Bay. Here he died 20 February 1966.
[See also World War II, U.S. Naval Operations in: The Pacific.]

Bibliography

E. B. Potter , Nimitz, 1976.

E. B. Potter